Design Director, Project Lead

The Role

As a Design Director, you'll play a central role throughout the entire project — establishing the design vision that delivers benefits both to clients and their users by creating meaningful ways for them to interact, always ensuring that our work has the intended business impact. This position is fully remote.

• Lead teams and engage clients through the entire project.
• Plan and run a design process that delivers on core business goals.
• Design solutions that unlock opportunities for teams and clients.
• Explain the value of every decision, win over stakeholders, and fulfill the creative strategy.
• Navigate complex business, user, and team needs with empathy.

Last but not least: People who succeed here are empathetic teammates who are candid, kind, caring, and embody our core values. We believe that diverse, inclusive teams make the most impactful work. Upstatement is deeply invested in ensuring that we have a supportive, growth-oriented environment that works for everyone.

Why Upstatement

Upstatement is a digital product studio with an editorial mindset. We use the tools of design, engineering, and journalism to enrich lives and create a more just society. Our 40-person team works with established leaders (Nike, MIT, ESPN, PBS, Microsoft) and emerging companies who are about to change the world. We are members of the kyu Collective and combine the energy of a boutique studio with the business maturity of an established global innovation leader.

• Work with ethical and mission-driven organizations.
• Collaborate in a high-trust environment that empowers creative ownership.
• Build a portfolio you can be proud of.
• Blossom in a small studio culture full of top talent and peers who help you grow.
• Find your path at a place that prizes flexibility: We encourage experimentation, support role switching, and help people balance between maker/manager and lead/support.

What You’ll Do

On Projects:

• Deliver portfolio-worthy work: As a hands-on designer and team leader.
• Engage clients: Demonstrate expertise that builds long-term relationships. Relentlessly explain the why behind every decision, win over stakeholders, and fulfill the creative strategy throughout the project lifecycle.
• Collaborate with and develop others: Coach cross-functional teams to achieve their best, providing mentorship and opportunities to own tasks that build expertise.
• Drive research: Develop a deep understanding of each client’s goals, business context, user behavior, and opportunities. Run interviews, workshops, and analysis.
• Define the why: Establish a foundational strategy through design that will unlock goals and drive future creative output. Inspire content creators, engineers, product managers, and clients with your ideas.
• Make from the start: Use your strength as a designer and communicator to synthesize insights that inspire any room to believe in your vision — and act on it.
• Navigate complexity: Resolve tensions between clients, users, and teams effectively and with empathy.
• Promote expertise: Collaborate with business development and marketing teams to attract top talent and client prospects.
• Expand capabilities: Make every project more impactful than the last. Grow our network of project partners, from freelancers to agencies.
• Continuously improve: Plan, run, and refine the way design projects go at Upstatement, documenting and sharing best practices, so they set the new standard.

About You

• 7+ years of hands-on design and project leadership experience at a digital agency or equivalent.
• Independent design leader with a portfolio of work demonstrating business impact across products, and websites.
• Expertise in leading research programs - ethnographic interviews, workshops, competitive audits - that result in impactful design executions.
• Capable of breaking down complexity and understanding the business context of each client. Identifying the big opportunities and articulating the why behind every decision.
• Displays craft by designing around new concepts. Helps clients succeed with tools and guidelines.
• Ability to motivate and manage a multidisciplinary team. Ensures the team's work is always aligned with the core idea and creates space for them to make decisions and grow.
• Transforms design concepts into user interfaces and establishes comprehensive design systems.
• Strong communicator and active listener with the ability to inspire any room to buy into the team's vision. Maintains strong relationships with collaborators and client stakeholders, even when challenged. Expert at change management.
• Sets the pace of velocity and efficiency through every step of the process, course correcting based on feedback and improving how we work together.
• Support business development initiatives as a creative representative

Compensation

Upstatement is committed to helping our people grow and providing transparent salary benchmarks. This job fits two possible levels in our skill progression framework (something we’d love to share during the interview process). The level depends the candidate’s unique qualifications, to be determined during the interview process.

• Level: DM5
• Official Title: Design Director
• Department: Design Management
• Salary Range: $150,000 - $185,000

• Level: DM6
• Official Title: Senior Design Director
• Department: Design Management
• Salary Range: $185,000 - $220,000